The Hijikata Parable
by A Natsume Yuujinchou lover
Summary: Just like that last time with the guy in the mask, Hijikata finds himself in yet another dangerous situation. Only that this time, he's alone... With a certain someone narrating his every move. One-shot.


**[A/N]:** This story is based off a game called **The Stanley Parable**. I'm testing 'deep' waters for this one, so please review if you want more. I'm not using Japanese honorifics for the first time too.

**[Disclaimer]:** Gintama belongs to _Sorachi Hideaki_ & The Stanley Parable to _Galactic Café_.

* * *

_"This is the story about a man named Stanley."_

_"Stanley worked for a company, in a building where he was employee number 427."_

"_Employee number 427's job was simple. He sat in his room 427 and he pushed buttons on his keyboard._"

"_Orders came through a monitor on his desk, telling him what buttons to push, how long to push them, and in what order._"

"_This is what Employee number 427 did every day, every month of every year._"

"_And although others might have considered it soul-rending, Stanley relished every moment the orders came in, as if he had been made exactly for this job._"

"_And Stanley… was happy._"

"…"

"…"

"… What kind of script is this?"

* * *

Hijikata woke up to the hard surface of an office desk against his face. He lifted his head and scanned the room he was in. On the desk sat a pretty old computer and a telephone. A multi-layered desk drawer was placed under the table and a number of larger drawers took up half the wall opposite the computer and next to the desk. Last but not least, there was the black desk chair he was sitting on.

"Where am I?" Hijikata grumbled, pressing a palm against his temple where he could feel a headache coming. He remembered he had been making his rounds around the city, and had just stopped for lunch when someone knocked him out… Now he ended up here.

He spared a suspicious glance at the neat, western-styled office outside the room he was in. Well, no use just sitting here, he sighed. He might as well try to find a way out and, if he manages to find the mastermind behind his kidnapping, make him commit seppuku or something.

As soon as he stepped out of his room, the door closed behind him and a voice spoke over the PA system.

"Mic-test, mic-test. Hm, it seems to be working."

It was a voice Hijikata easily recognized.

"So-Sougo! What are you doing?!"

"Sougo? Who's Sougo? I am simply one hell of a narrator."

"Don't lie to me, Sougo! Why did you kidnap me? And why the hell am I in some western office?"

"We'll never get this story moving if we stand about chatting all day."

"Hey, don't ignore me!"

"Ahem. _All of his co-workers were gone. What could it mean? Stanley–_ hey, you made a mistake here. It's supposed to be 'Hijikata', not 'Stanley'."

"Who are you talking to?!"

"Oh well. I'll just change the script accordingly. _Hijikata decided to go to the meeting room; perhaps he had simply missed a memo._"

"Hey! Sougo!"

The static from the PA system died down, leaving Hijikata standing alone in the hallway. He stared at his surroundings for a while, taking in all that Okita had just stated before shooting off like a rocket to the other desks before him, desperately looking for anything- anyone, even- who could help him get out of his predicament.

"_No matter how hard Hijikata looked, he couldn't find a trace of his co-workers._"

Hijikata immediately turned to the speakers, but they have already been turned off.

Spitting out multiple curses under his breath and feeling very tobacco-deprived, Hijikata made his way out of the office and along the hallway through another door. He was faced with yet another office-room like the previous one he was in and a second hallway.

Reluctantly trudging through both corridors, Hijikata soon arrived at a different room with only two doors.

"_When mayo-freak came across a set of two open doors, he entered the door on his left._ "

"Don't call me 'mayo-freak', you sadist!"

"Ah. But I am simply one hell–"

"And don't use the same joke twice! It's getting old!"

"… of a sadist. Whatever, I'll leave you be."

Hijikata sighed, feeling the headache even stronger than before. He spared a weary glance at both doors. Okita said to go through the **left door**, but from his experience with the teen whenever he asked Hijikata to do something it often resulted in him almost getting killed by the former.

He decided to take the **right door**.

"_This was not the correct way to the meeting room, and the mayo-freak knew it perfectly well. Perhaps he wanted to stop by the employee lounge first, just to admire it._"

Hijikata ignored Okita's voice, thinking it wouldn't be back so soon. Unfortunately, it came back sooner than he had expected.

"_Ah, yes. Truly a room worth admiring. It had really been worth the detour after all, just to spend a few moments here in this immaculate, beautifully constructed room._ Now, if only Hijikata would just sit here forever, rot and die-"

"I HEARD THAT!"

"_But eager to get back to business, the bastard took the first open door on his left._ "

"_And so he detoured through the maintenance section, walked straight ahead to the opposite door, and got back on track._"

Hijikata stared at the open door to his left, then at the open door in front of him. He reconsidered his options. There should have been a reason why Okita gave him another opportunity to head to this 'meeting room', wasn't there? Not to mention he didn't know what lay ahead of him if he took a different route.

Against his better judgement, Hijikata took a left turn, ignored the spot-lighted elevator down to who-knows-where, and walked straight into the dimly-lit meeting room.

"_Yet there was not a single person here either. Feeling a wave of disbelief, mayo-freak decided to go up to his bosses' office, hoping he might find an answer there._"

His bosses' office…? That's bullshit; Kondo's his only boss! Who the hell is this 'boss' of his?!

Hijikata stopped his inner-mind rant. Calm down, Hijikata Toshiro! It's not reality; it's just a game that sadistic bastard set up with the help of some other random dude. It was the same with that guy wearing the weird white mask last time too.

"_Coming to a staircase, he walked upstairs to his bosses' office._"

He took the stairs up to wherever Okita said it led to.

"_Stepping into his manager's office, mayo-freak was once again stunned to discover not an indication of any human life. Shocked, unravelled, he wondered in disbelief who orchestrated this, what dark secret was being held from him._"

"_What he could not have known was that the keypad behind the boss' desk guarded the terrible truth that his boss had been keeping from him._"

"_And so the boss had assigned it an extra secret pin number:_ 2-1-11-1."

Hijikata hastily walked behind the boss' desk, punching in the numbers Okita had just spoken through the PA system. The machine beeped in denied entry.

"Opps. Sorry, I said the wrong pin number. It's actually: 19-8-9-14-5."

"That keypad can only key 4 digits, idiot!"

"Damn. Alright, I'll say it. It's: 1-8-15'.

Hijikata punched in the numbers again, still getting the same rejected beeps from before.

"**SOUGO!"**

"What? Stop toying with him and just give him the pin number?"

"…"

"Tch. Fine. The pin number's _2-8-4-5._"

Hijikata punched in the password for the third time that day. A soft rumbling sound was heard from the door and a secret entrance opened on the wall on his right. He stared sceptically at it before going straight through it, taking a turn left to what looked like an elevator.

"You do realize all the pin numbers earlier were all insults, right?"

"… Shut up, Sougo."

"It's unfortunate, but I can't do that. I have lines to read. Ahem."

"_Descending deeper into the building, Hijikata realized he felt a bit peculiar. It was a stirring emotion in his chest, as though he felt more free to think for himself, to question the nature of his job. Why did he feel this now, when for years it had never occurred to him? This question would not go unanswered for long._ That was reeeaallllly long. Ah, I made a pun."

"… Seriously, just shut up."

"Fine. I won't say a word."

The PA system's static flicked to silence. Hijikata stood in the elevator, enjoying a moment's peace before the elevator cranked loudly to a stop. The metal fences blocking his exit earlier moved upwards upon the elevator reaching its destination. He took a hesitant step into the dark corridor, then another, before he took a deep breath and made slightly more confident strides into the darkness.

The darkness did not last long; an entrance with the words **Mind Control Facility** in white, bold font greeted him after two turns right and a turn left.

Hijikata started feeling sick to the stomach, but ignored the suspiciously clean wall leading to another exit on his left and made his way into the dark hall before him. A sole platform was lit with an overhead spotlight. On the desk sat a single square button with a black-yellow border and the drawing of a light bulb on it. He pressed it, and regretted doing so immediately after.

As if by magic, the lights on the ground and ceiling lit up, revealing the walls completely covered by television screens of the same size. A second platform lit up a distance away, and a narrow wire-framed walkway rose for Hijikata to walk across.

This time, he came across four desks. Three had identical computers sitting on them. The last had a button similar to the light-bulb one earlier but it was round, had the picture of a surveillance camera on it and lacked the black-yellow border. Seemingly drawn by it, his right hand reached out and pressed the button.

The screens burst to life, each having a white background and a three-digit number. His eyes widened when they fell upon the room number he was in earlier: room number 427. The numbered screen then flickered into the scene of the room 427. In the exact way he had left it.

Now everything made sense to him.

"Dammit, Sougo! Who exactly did you team up with?!"

His shout echoed throughout the hall, but the response never came.

"Answer me, Sougo!"

Yet only silence greeted him again.

"_Now the monitors jumped to life, their true nature revealed. Each bore the number of an employee in the building. Stanley's co-workers, the lives of so many individuals reduced to images on a screen And Stanley, one of them, eternally monitored in this place where freedom meant nothing._"

"_This mind control facility, it was too horrible to believe. It couldn't be true. Had Stanley really been under someone's control all this time? Was this the only reason he was happy with his boring job? That his emotions had been manipulated to except it blindly?_"

"_No, he refused to believe it. He couldn't accept it. His own life in someone else's control? Never. It was unthinkable, wasn't it? Was it even possible? Had he truly spent his entire life utterly blind to the world?_"

"…"

"… You know, I really pity this Stanley guy. You really made him go through all this, didn't you."

"…"

"It's almost time for the finale? Well, I'd better get back to work."

"…!"

"Yeah, I understand, I understand. 'Make sure to follow the script', right? Doesn't take an idiot to know what you mean... ."

The movement of a second narrow wire-framed walkway caught Hijikata's line of sight. He turned, spotting a third platform a distance away. He immediately dashed across, seeing only a desk and button like the one on the first platform. This button, however, had the drawing of a man in a box and an arrow pointing upwards.

He had to find the mastermind behind this, Hijikata mused aloud. This whole mind control situation- it was simply inhumane! No one deserved this, not even- he couldn't believe he made this comparison at first- the bandits who cut Tamegoro's eyes and took away his sight forever. Or that bastard brother and leader of the Mimawarigumi. No human or Amanto deserved this sort of treatment. He knew that.

He pressed the button with all his hatred poured into that strike, almost breaking it before the elevator came down from a room above. He stepped inside, and waited impatiently for it to bring him to the upper floor.

The doors opened with a soft click, and he stepped into a wider room with multiple tables and monitors everywhere. The room was dimly lit, with a single light source over the door that said **Facility Power**. Then Okita's voice was heard again.

"_But here was the proof. The heart of the operation. Controls labelled with emotions. Happy, sad, or content. Walking, eating, working… All of it monitored and commanded from this very place. And as the cold reality of his past began to sink in, Stanley decided that this machinery would never again exert its terrible power over another human life. For he would dismantle the controls once and for all._ It seems this Stanley person had failed in doing so, unfortunately."

"And whose fault is that?"

"It's not mine. I'm just reading off the script."

"So where do I go now?"

"Let's see… Head into the facility room and press the **OFF button**."

"I'll do just that."

Hijikata walked with rather large, hurried steps into the room Okita mentioned just moments ago. True to his suspicions, a long, wire-framed pathway led to a control panel with two buttons- the left one said **ON** while the right was **OFF**.

"Well... Here goes nothing..." Hijikata took a deep breath and stepped forward to press the **OFF button**.

As he did so, however, he failed to notice a single banana peel cleverly dropped from the ceiling right before his next step. He stepped on it, slipped, and as he tried to regain his balance his flailing left hand accidentally pressed one of the buttons.

Hijikata froze, trying to process everything that had just happened. Very slowly he turned to the control panel.

The ON button lit up.

He cursed.

"Ah... You went and pressed the **ON** button. You're so screwed now, Hijikata, even after I gave you a chance to escape. What next... According to the script I have to blow this place up now."

"Wha- you left that banana peel there on purpose, didn't you?!"

"Banana peel? Why would there even be something like that in this place? This ain't **Garry's Mod Prop Hunt**, bananas don't just move around freely–"

"SOUGO!"

"Anyway, Hijikata, it's your defeat. And you were so close to the exit, too."

"And whose fault was it that I pressed the wrong button?"

"Hmm... Where's that button... Oh, here it is." the gigantic screen in front of him flashed blue with a white-coloured timer on it. "Initiating countdown sequence of 2 minutes."

"You can't be serious!"

"Didn't I tell you at the start, Hijikata? I am simply one hell of a narrator."

"Okay, now that joke's just old."

Both were silent for a few seconds before Okita continued.

"Hey, you don't look like you're going to die even if a bomb kills you. So you won't mind if I speed up the detonation countdown, right?"

"Of course I mind! Hell, even the Amanto can't stand up to one of Katsura's bombs, what makes you think I can survive one?!"

"Okay~~ I press."

**10 seconds remaining.**

"You were freaking serious about it!"

**9 seconds remaining.**

"Hey, Sougo!"

**8 seconds remaining.**

"This isn't funny anymore, Sougo!"

**7 seconds remaining.**

"I'm really going to die!"

**6 seconds remaining.**

"Hey!"

**5 seconds remaining.**

"Five~"

"Now you're counting along?!"

"Four~"

"Three~"

"Two~"

**1 second remaining.**

"Shi–"

Then everything went black.

**-The Hijikata Parable-**

**-Explosion Ending-**

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.

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-The end?-


End file.
